CHAPDISC: DH3, The Dursleys Departing

[kneazlecat54]

No: HPFGUIDX 177527

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "vexingconfection" 
<Vexingconfection at ...> wrote:
>
> > Laura:
> > My guess is that the Dursleys hated magic because it gave other
> > people power that they could never get, not even by buying it or
> > bullying it out of someone.  But if they could have gotten 
magical
> > powers, all of a sudden it would look pretty good to them, 
because
> > they're all about status.  <snip> 

> vexingconfection:
> I think the Dursleys would choose to not admit to any child even 
if it were Dudley's. Even though it was hinted that Petunia hated 
wizards and witches out of jealousy- I see alot of prewar Germany in 
JKR's books.  <snip>The Nazis also considered themselves to be a 
master race deserving of leading the world and those who were not of 
pure blood did not deserve to live. Does anyone else see the 
similarities?
>
Laura:

JKR lives in a culture in which race and ethnicity are very much 
live issues, due to the influx of people from Britain's former 
colonies after WWII and continuing through the present.  This mixing 
has not been smooth, especially in a society that was already highly 
stratified along class lines.  So I don't think JKR had to look to 
Nazi Germany to see the tensions and conflicts produced by people's 
inability to live with those who are different from themselves.  
Sure, the Nazis are the extreme case, and maybe the (il)logical end  
of bigotry is inevitably physical elimination of the group that's 
perceived to be different.  But we have seen more cases of 
racial/ethnic war since WWII than we'd like to admit.

Maybe the more interesting observation that can be (and, I'm sure, 
has been) made is between Voldemort and Hitler.  Both of them became 
champions of pureblood movements to which by rights they should not 
have belonged at all.  Hitler was about as purely Aryan as Tom 
Riddle was purely wizard.  But they managed to make their followers 
forget that inconvenient reality  due to the force of their 
personalities-and the extremes to which they were willing to go.  
And, of course, their followers had their own reasons for buying the 
myth.